Joey, there was no Antony Evans on Saturday. Is he in with a shout for Tuesday?
Yeah, Evo will come back into the mix. The problem for him now is who are you going to leave out?
He was chomping at the bit. He trained before the weekend but we felt we would give him that little bit of extra time, and also we knew we weren’t going to make many changes on Saturday due to the quality of the performance against Sutton.
So we gave him that extra period of recuperation, but he’s chomping at the bit.
Alfie Kilgour has had a little bit of a setback so we’re going to have to be careful with him. His knee is still grumbling on.
Josh Grant is hopefully back on the grass and comes back into contention, maybe for Tuesday, maybe.
Jon Nolan, who we haven’t seen yet. He had his first full block of training.
We’re coming, and that’s a credit to the owner. He’s allowed us to bring in some quality players and we’re being rewarded for his support.
It gives you options, doesn’t it? Ryan Loft gives you a different way than when you’ve got Aaron Collins there. In midfield, you’ve got different horses for courses so you can select depending on conditions and who you’re playing.
Yeah, and you want to have that flexibility in your squad, but once the results and performances come, the flexibility kind of goes out the window because football takes care of it and the team ends up picking itself, pretty much.
That’s what always happens, and the key for us is if someone picks up a knock or a niggle, the drop off in terms of quality to the next person ready to go is not massive, so we’re able to not skip a beat.
Clean sheets and goals are coming and you can see that finish line is within distance and we’re moving with some momentum, so long may that continue.
Are you seeing that momentum in their faces and what the players are doing, whether it’s behind the scenes or on the training pitch, that swagger when you’re in the zone?
Yeah, but we’ve got a good group. They’re really level headed and they don’t get carried away. They know we’ve had a slow start to the season and we’ve got work to do.
I think actually getting off to a poor start and coming through that carnage, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We have made it through as a group, there were different times that we were tested and we made it through.
We have a real strength and resilience now because we don’t take our fanbase for granted and we know what it’s like if we’re not running hard and not playing well.
Now, because we’ve experienced both of those feelings with the group, we know what we much prefer and the lads go out now and the fans know this team is going to leave everything out on the pitch. That’s what any fan asks for.
On the backside of that, yeah, we’re playing some great football in the midst of that and scoring goals and winning games.
The Gasheads have been through some tough periods but we’re starting to get a team and, more importantly, a football club that they can be proud of because for a long period it’s been a little bit of a chaotic time to be a Gashead for maybe a couple of decades.
We want to give them a football club that lasts the ages and is a benchmark that whoever comes after us, the next custodian, that stands the test of time.
It’s Leyton Orient up next and in the home game, I thought they looked very good, but they are not on a good run at the moment.
No, they’re not, but they’re probably the best team we’ve faced. Them and Swindon at home gave us a real doing. They were miles better than us and we were trying to find our way and we were all over the gaff.
But we’re a completely different outfit now and it looks like the big, strong, physical boys they (Orient) had early in the season, the games take their toll on them because they’re a bit bigger and they get a bit stiffer as the weather comes and the fitness levels start to diminish. Carrying a 6ft 6in player starts to become a negative for you.
Their game was called off on Saturday morning at Harrogate. I’m pretty sure they would have travelled up there on Friday and they didn’t play. We’ll find out after 90 minutes on Tuesday if that’s worked for them or against them.
But you can’t imagine anything but pure confidence and belief growing through our players having dusted Stevenage off on Saturday.
We look forward to playing anybody now. We faced Mansfield and Sutton, who were the two form sides in our division for sure, but we are also. I talk about the 10-game blocks and I think there’s only Mansfield sitting above us in that form table, and we intend to keep driving the standards and getting better.
The best is yet to come from this group, for sure.
Joey, on Saturday I saw you go over and embrace the owner at full time. Do you have anything to say about him because, through some difficult times for you and the team, his support appears to have been unwavering?
Huge. I spoke to you, and I can’t remember the game, it might have been Leyton Orient at home, when I said I spoke to him about leaving the position.
“Am I the right person?” The fans didn’t think I was, or certainly a majority, and it’s tough because I knew if I was going to be a success here, I needed the fans’ backing because of how big and important they are.
It was really difficult for us and that’s where I believe leadership cascades down. Wael has made some big calls right across the board within the infrastructure, one of them being to bring me in.
I’m a difficult man to employ because a lot is written and said about me, but he had the foresight to realise just how good we are as a coaching a group.
We didn’t get off to a flyer. You come in with all the bravado and the belief because of the job you’d done previously, and it didn’t quite go to plan because in reality I’m inheriting somebody else’s players and somebody else’s standards.
They were nowhere near the level, but now with hard work and a collective effort, we’ve got the football club in a position where it can do itself justice.
This is just the start point for us. I’m not even a year into the job, I think that happens on Tuesday night.
We’re not the finished article and we’ve got a lot of work to do, but the club is absolutely united now through the turbulence and the owner is part of that, Tom Gorringe as well as a young CEO.
Without them, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing without the pitch, certainly without the owner’s support, and I’m forever grateful for those moments where he told me he had absolute faith in me when I was even doubting myself.
I’m forever thankful for that and I intend to deliver the man a football club that lasts the ages.
You’re in the midst of one of those moments that makes your season because it’s back-to-back away games in a short space of time, the weather’s not good and it’s not an easy time to be playing for a team that wants to get it down and play. But you must be looking to seize these challenges?
Yeah, and we’ve been a big target all year for everybody. Wherever we’ve gone, we’ve been a big target because of some of the names we’ve got in the squad and we expect the best out of every team because that’s what we got in the opening gambit.
I spoke to the lads at half time on Saturday and said “We absolutely schooled them, expect them to be miles better in the second half” because there was going to be a managerial rant at half time because they were miles off it.
They just weren’t at the races so I was expecting them to come out and be at it. They changed shape and went to a 3-5-2 and they had a little bit of a spell as you’d expect at home with the crowd and the wind at their back, but once we settled back into it, we scored the second goal and from there it was a relatively comfortable afternoon.
For us, we’re going to have to do the same on Tuesday night. They’re going to be tricky. They’ve got some wily players in there, your (Darren) Pratleys etc, who will know how to win a game of football and if we’re not at our best – as we found out to our detriment at Oldham – you’ll get your comeuppance.
Finally, how wary are you of upsetting the balance? You’ve gone unchanged three games on the spin. You’ve got lots of players waiting in the wings, but do you see it as plug in and play or do you have something really good at the moment that you don’t want to upset too much?
We’ll make a call based on how we see the lads’ bodies and what the medical and sport science staff say.
For us, it’s a case of picking the best team, the best lads who have got the most energy and to go and win that game.
It will fluctuate because the schedule predicts that. Hopefully, I can pick the same team every week. It was easy for me on Saturday, “Same again lads”.
The lads who are on the bench and not in the squad understand why because they see how well the team is playing, but we’ve also got to manage bodies and load. That’s where the benefit of having a good squad pays you back.
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